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AstroEQ for EQ mounts

Oily

By Oily
in DIY Astronomer

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JamesF

JamesF

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That will still leave me with another pair for back up so just let me know.  I don't think sky-watcher sell these motors on there own and I am not sure if the EQ5 motors will fit your EQ3 mount.

I believe the only difference between the EQ3-2 and EQ5 dual axis motor kits is the handset.  In fact I think the handsets are near identical too.  I suspect it's only the programming of the microcontroller that is different, to account for the different gear ratios.

James

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Quatermass

Quatermass

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Right I took everything out tonight for its first test run but although eqmod was connecting with my gears and saying it was tracking all my stars were blurred out. I had done a polar alignment but it made no difference. Most frustrating but it is my first go with eqmod and its not easy to understand all the settings. On the plus side my make shift observatory was lovely just need some help figuring out how to get my tracking working.

cloud cloud go away come again another day

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Quatermass

Quatermass

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Hi James

Not yet, so far I have learned to get it all connected so I can slew the scope with the slew controls and change the speed of the slew rate. I then learned how to get CDC to connect and slew the scope to my target. So much to learn.

So today I was following Chris's utube video on Alignment part one, learning about point alignment today which is what you mean I guess.

I did not do any of that last night.

All I I did was polar align the scope like I normally do with out eqmod then hit the sidereal star button to start tracking and took a ten second shot. Result was star trails all over the place so I am guessing that was totally not the way to do things lol.

So what am I doing wrong any clues for a complete eqmod newbie?

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TCWORLD

TCWORLD

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Hi all,

Just in case anyone else has this problem, it is caused by an incorrect setup in AstroEQ. AstroEQ needs to know what direction the motors spin. It can slew south, but it has no way of knowing if it is actually slewing south, or if it is slewing north. (same for East/West). There is an option for each axis in the config utility which tells AstroEQ to reverse the axis direction.

In this case it means that AstroEQ is tracking correctly, but in the wrong direction (essentially the stars are now moving twice as fast as they would normally!). The solution is to run the config utility again and select the option to reverse the RA axis direction. That should now make it track correctly.

Regards,

Tom.

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Quatermass

Quatermass

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Here is a picture of the config utility for AstroEQ where I have switched off the "reverse axis direction" button and then just press "done" to finish loaded the correct setting in to AstroEQ so if its clear tonight I will be all good to go now. Tom informs me that the RA and DEC reverse button don't have any effect the main EQmod control panel though so you might want to take note of that one. :smiley:

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Quatermass

Quatermass

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Right I am all set for tonight with my telescope mount and camera in place. Cables running from the Canon 350d to my laptop which is then controlled by Backyard EOS, two ST4 TO ST4 cables are running from my RA and DEC gears into the AstroEQ control box. This is plugged into a 12volt adapter powersupply and a mini usb cable into the laptop. Looks like spag junction but its all inside my home made observatory now so now more having to move the mount and get set up again.

AstroEQ is active and working with Cartes du Ciel Sky chart free software which in turn connects my mount up to AstroEQ and the EQmod software. Phew and all this from a guy who swore he would never use a laptop.

Any way its all ready for tonight when I hope to give it all a good testing out. Heres some pics..

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Quatermass

Quatermass

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Which cable do you use to connect the AstroEQ to the standard motors please?

I bought two ST4 to ST4 cable from fleabay for about 5 quid there 5 foot long each and you plug them into the astro eq box, one for the dec motor and one for the ra motor.

Here are the ones I bought for my EQ5 gears.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/190738599768?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

You can see them coming out of the Astroeq box in the pictures above they are the  gray flat cables.

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Quatermass

Quatermass

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Well had a great time tonight all went very well and I managed to get everything working. Using CDC EQMOD and ASTROEQ I was able to slew from one target to another and my pictures on all 4 moves back and forth were spot on, this is brilliant. Did a quick alignment on Deneb in Cygnus so it was in my eye piece then pressed the sync button in CDC after selecting it from the find menus. Eqmod sets that as a point then you select another target and hit the slew button. The telescope moves to your target and then stops in the right place. Dead easy to find your exact spot. I tried it on the faint north american nebula and was able to get right on the area I wanted very quickly so cool. Got Lots to learn about eqmod but AstroEQ works great and having all these functions on my eq5 is excellent. Plus being in my home made observatory was the icing on the cake. :D

cloud cloud go away come again another day

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Quatermass

Quatermass

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Well time to post some results from last nights session.

The AstroEQ worked great and although I had not sussed everything out I had enough knowledge to get going. First of all I just did a normal polar alingment with EQMod, down on your knees look through the polars scope and line up polaris in the little reticule after roughly lining the plough symbol up with the one in the sky. I have done this for all my image sessions and never had any issues so thought lets just do that for now. Next I put the telescope dead on Vega so it was centred in my eye piece and switched on astroeq and eq mod. 

Brought up Cartes du Ciel and connected to my mount with the telescope control panel. You have to insure you give EQMod the lat and longtitude setting but that's all covered in the documentation on the website. Also have to make sure your scope is unparked.

Next with Vega in the centre of the eyepiece I just hit the sync button in CDC and EQmod added an alignment point. This done I chose another star Deneb and hit the slew button in CDC. The scope moved over to Deneb and it was bang on. Briliant. Gave it a few more tests on other stars and then put the camera on and focused it up with my Bahtinov Mask. 

Having done all that it was time to see if Astro eq and eqmod could find the North American nebula and get me on the section called the Wall.  Not easy to find on what was almost a full moon lit night but a good test non the less.

I selected the little binoculars in cdc and searched for it in the list of deep sky common names and went to it with the slew button. Took a few shots and could not make out much so decided to use the slew controls on the Eqmod interface. Moved the target into position with the slew controls so it was right in the area where the wall is and once it had stopped took a shot to see what I had got.

 Bingo there it was, wow I am impressed with this bit of kit I thought.

So any way took 25 shots of it just for fun and to see if I could get anything thinking to myself this will be rubbish and I need a clear dark moon less night.But after stacking my subs I managed to get this image..

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its not the greatest image of the Wall but I was just chuffed to be able to locate it so quick and have everything working. Oily has told me how to set the parking of the telescope now which is pretty straight forward. In EQMod interface in the middle panel under Park/Unpark you hit the button with a P and a cross on it after you have set up your scope to the home position or as I had done manually polar aligned the scope. This will bring up the Define park / Unpark box and you hit reset and set in both panels to set your home position and your done and ready to slew to your target. 

Still lots to learn but top marks for AstroEQ.

Being able to have full go to and use EQmod on my EQ5 mount for 90.00 quid the cost of the Astro EQ is brilliant. Tom Carpenter has done all us EQ5 mount owners a big favour making such a great little control box, worth every penny.

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Gina

Gina

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Thank you to all who have posted in this thread - very interesting :)

I'm interested in this as the interface between a DIY mount I'm designing for widefield imaging and EQMOD.  I was going to do it all myself but a ready made solution definitely seems the way to go.  No point in "re-inventing the wheel" :)

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Quatermass

Quatermass

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Hi Gina, this would be a cost effective diy solution for your home made rig I guess and judging from your cooled DSLR projects and others your pretty good at that sort of thing.

I never realised how good EQmod is until now and ASTROEQ allows me to make full use of it with my eq5. :D

cloud cloud go away come again another day

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Quatermass

Quatermass

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I often find it better to have a picture or diagram to explain how things all fit together so here is a diagram of all my kit using AstroEQ controll box with my sky-watcher 200p and EQ5 mount my Canon 350D modded by myself and the cables listed. Some can be got from ebay others like the ones for the canon you may need to get from astronomisers website but none of this lot is hard to get hold of. Cost wise its a cheap set up for go to, apart from the dec and ra gears unless you already have them in which case you just need AstroEQ from Tom Carpenter. The software is all free apart from backyard eos but its a great bit of software and cheap to purchase.

With this lot all set up I know have fully working go to system with my EQ5 mount and can make full use of EQmod and the EQascom set up. :grin:

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Gina

Gina

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Thank you Mark :)  Just one thing isn't clear - are the stepper motors supplied as part of the kit of do you source these yourself?

For my purpose (which differs from adding remote controll drives to an existing EQ mount) I plan to put all the electronics and stepper motors inside my DIY mount, so I wouldn't require case or connectors of the AstroEQ.  It occurs to me that I could source the components myself and just use Tom's open source software and firmware.

I don't know if you could answer this or maybe I should ask Tom on Astronomy Shed - I am a member.

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MattGoo

MattGoo

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I have an EQ5, with the standard EQ5 dual-axis motors fitted - can I use AstroEQ with these motors?

I've modded the EQ5 handset to have a ST4 guideport, and currently guide using the QHY5. I assume AstroEQ also has a ST4 guideport (in)?

If both answers are 'Yes' then I may be tempted to look into this.

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Oily

Oily

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I have an EQ5, with the standard EQ5 dual-axis motors fitted - can I use AstroEQ with these motors?

I've modded the EQ5 handset to have a ST4 guideport, and currently guide using the QHY5. I assume AstroEQ also has a ST4 guideport (in)?

If both answers are 'Yes' then I may be tempted to look into this.

Both answers are yes(newer versions of AstroEQ have an st4 port) but you can guide without the st4 port using pulse guiding in EQMOD

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JamesF

JamesF

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The only real issue with using the standard dual axis motors is that you can go and make a cup of tea whilst it slews to a new target :)

Oily's video posted earlier gives you an idea of the speed.  It's hardly the end of the world.

James

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